A7N266-E Crashing during games on XP. Sound card related?

[weems]

I have an Asus A7N266-E with a 1.4GB Athlon chip, 256MB of Crucial
RAM, BIOS version(ASUS - 42302e31), and a 20GB Hard drive. I use
the on-board GeForce2 MX video card (Current driver 4.5.2.3). I'm at
the end of my rope but I'll try to keep it short--I'd appreciate any
help!

- For most of the life of this PC (about 18 months), the PC has been
crashing when I play any graphics-intensive game (ex. EA Sports Games,
Medal of Honor). It has never crashed when I was doing anything else
on the PC. This crash occurs sometimes 30-40 minutes into playing,
and sometime mere seconds into playing. There seems to be no pattern.
On Win 98, the crash rebooted the PC. On Win XP, it just goes to a
black screen and I have to manually reboot by pressing the power
button. Recently I've discovered, (and I've got enough test time to
state confidently) that the error will not occur if the sound card is
removed. Now the troubleshooting:

- My intial concern was heat, so I picked up a Thermaltake fan for the
video card and a Volcano 7 Processor fan. The Asus monitor shows that
there are no heat problems. The crash continues.

- I then worried about being underpowered, so I purchased a 430W Antec
power supply that was on Athlon's recommended list. The crash
continues.

- I upgraded OSes from Windows 98 to Windows XP and I have
consistantly updated my video drivers. The crash continues.

- I have not upgraded the BIOS (which I should do), but I'm reasonably
confident that can't be the cause since I have a heavily gaming friend
with the same motherboard and no BIOS updates and no reboot problem.

- I've swapped out the RAM with known good RAM. No effect.

- Once I discovered removing the sound card seemed to stop the crash,
I removed the ACR-A6CH Audio card and replaced it with a known good
sound card. I put the new card into a different PCI slot. The crash
continues.

So I'm completely out of ideas. I can now try to replace the video
card, but if that was it, I wouldn't expect the crash to stop
happening when I take out the sound card. Has anybody seen anything
like this? I thank you all in advance for your help.

Regards,
J. Williams

 

[weems]

As a follow up, I upgraded to the latest BIOS (A7NE1004.AWD) this
morning. Still crashing.

Regards,
J. Williams

 

[Chris Simpson]

Its not a BIOS problem.... Are you useing the latest drivers for your
sound card?

 

[Chris Simpson]

Oh, also how hot is your system getting?

 

[weems]

Chris,

You asked how hot the system gets and whether or not my graphics
drivers are up to date.

My current driver is 52.16, so it is a little behind 53.03 (I've
downloaded that and I'll update it). I'm doubting it is a device
driver issue since I have a friend with an identical board, using the
on-board video card, and we've had the same level driver and I have
the problem and he has never seen anything like it. I'm trying to keep
it updated however.

As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and
the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat
doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds
into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this
point, but let me know what you think.

I really appreciate your feedback,

J. Williams

 

[Chris Simpson]

OK, your system is not getting that hot... You might have a bum video
card... Can you try another one?

 

[mr_buggerlugs]

Chris,

You asked how hot the system gets and whether or not my graphics
drivers are up to date.

My current driver is 52.16, so it is a little behind 53.03 (I've
downloaded that and I'll update it). I'm doubting it is a device
driver issue since I have a friend with an identical board, using the
on-board video card, and we've had the same level driver and I have
the problem and he has never seen anything like it. I'm trying to keep
it updated however.

As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and
the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat
doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds
into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this
point, but let me know what you think.

I really appreciate your feedback,

J. Williams

Its not heat related. I suggest you download motherboard monitor and
check out your 3.3v, 5v and 12v readings as this sounds like a similar
problem I recently had when my PSU died a slow lingering death.

 

[weems]

Chris,

I will try a new video card, but I don't have anything similar to it
on hand, and it will be 1/5 before I can do so. I will definitely try
this--I just wanted to let you know why it might be a few days before
I can respond. Thanks again.

Mr_Buggerlugs,

Thanks for your help. Which MB monitor are you speaking of? I was
definitely seeing problems on the 12v line with my old power supply (I
was using ASUS's monitor--is that OK as a monitor?) but those problems
have gone away with the new 430W supply. But I certainly had a flaky
12v line for a while. How did that contribute to your problem.

Thanks again,

J. Williams

 

[Craig Matchan]

Hi,


[some of thread deleted]

As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and
the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat
doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds
into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this
point, but let me know what you think.

I'm coming into this without seeing your original posting, so I appologise
in advance if this has already been convered, however, from what I have read
it sounds like your system dies/crashes when anything 3d related happens. If
so, does the same thing happen when running dxdiag whilst doing the
direct3d tests?

It's just that I had an almost identical issue with a MSI K8T Neo
motherboard. The thing would work fine normally, but as soon as I tried
anything 3d related (and to some extent sound realated) then the system
would crash. After many hours of trying different video/sound cards, video
card drivers, etc it turned out to be ram related, though not a memory dim
as you may have thought. It turned out I had (in my haste) put the ram in
dim slots 2 and 3, not 1 and 2. As soon as I put the ram in slots 1 and 2
the thing worked. Perhaps you could check to see if you have populated dim
slots 1&2 and not any other cobination.

In the end I changed the m/b for an ASUS K8V, which has been running
flawlessly although I haven't tried putting the ram in slots 2&3 yet

Good Luck and Happy New Year

Craig

 

[mr_buggerlugs]

Thanks for your help. Which MB monitor are you speaking of? I was
definitely seeing problems on the 12v line with my old power supply (I
was using ASUS's monitor--is that OK as a monitor?) but those problems
have gone away with the new 430W supply. But I certainly had a flaky
12v line for a while. How did that contribute to your problem.

Thanks again,

Well random reboots for no apparent reason was the main symptom I saw,
regardless of cpu being under load or not. I was getting 4.40v on the
5v rail and 12.7v on the 12v but the psu jumped upto .5v up and down
on those rails.

Now I've got a new 550w psu its working fine now (touch wood).

 

[stang]

Hey Guys, having same problem as you and was thinking of following the
advice on a new PSU. I initially thought it was heat but have both
sides of the case off and am running a pretty powerfull housefan on
the the board at the highest speed setting. Same thing is happening,
when i play BF1942 or Warcraft it may take 3 minutes or 45 minutes but
eventually the screen just goes black and i have to reboot, keep me
posted if getting a better PSU fixes you up. my system specs are

a7n266-e
amd 1800 +
2 256 meg pc 2100 infineon ram
20 gig maxtor HD

 

[weems]

OK, I tried another GeForce2 card. I turned off the Onboard video
card and used this GeForce2 AGP card--I didn't have to change the
driver, obviously. It rebooted after about 6 minutes.

Any other ideas? I've still never been able to reproduce the problem
with the sound card removed, but replacing the sound card didn't fix
the problem. Does that make sense to anyone? Does it point to a
motherboard problem?

Thanks again for all your help.

--J. Williams